


Burn It Down

by The_Jade_Goblin



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, also dark!inquisitor, i guess, like extreme angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 08:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13142727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Jade_Goblin/pseuds/The_Jade_Goblin
Summary: Solas looked up at the sky, the beacon hit ripped this part of the Veil clean in half, like intended, but he hadn’t activated it.The location where the beacon was, had the harshest fires surrounding it, and the scorched earth could be seen for miles around. It’s what made his agents alert him in the first place.And there, in the middle of the fiery ring, was a single elf.“It’s her.” Solas murmured.





	Burn It Down

“Sir.” The elven agent pointed down to the clearing, where it still ablaze in fire. Parts of it had gone out and were simply smouldering, but the grasslands that had caught alight burned bright and dangerous further on the valley.

Solas looked up at the sky, the beacon hit ripped this part of the Veil clean in half, like intended, but he hadn’t activated it.

This part of the Free Marches had been left untouched by Fade rifts three years ago, he would have thought this location one of the hardest to unleash the beacon on to rip the Veil down, and yet there it was, a gash in the very fabric of the world, clean and simple.

Spirits wandered freely from the tear, not demonic in form but true in nature, curious wisps looking into the dying world of the mortal realm.

The location where the beacon was, had the harshest fires surrounding it, and the scorched earth could be seen for miles around.

It’s what made his agents alert him in the first place.

And there, in the middle of the fiery ring, was a single elf.

“It’s her.” Solas murmured.

The agent looked at him quizzically, but he did not elaborate further.

He left the agent standing there, as he effortlessly picked his way down the mountainside to the valley floor. As he approached, he saw her clearer.

Her silver-blonde hair lay undone, loose around her form. It had grown much longer since that last time he had seen her, and it covered her like a blanket of mist.

Her back faced him, her bare feet poking out from under her as she sat motionless on her knees, legs flat on the ground underneath her.

Her arm lay limp at her side, one a shimmering illusion of magic where an arm should be. Knight-Enchanter indeed.

Solas walked through the fire as though it were water, stepping over the smoking ground to her form. He approached her quietly, cautiously.

This was the first time they’d met face to face in over a year, and he wasn’t sure what to make of the current situation.

“ _Vhenan_ …”

She didn’t turn to him, but he shifted forward to see her face. It was almost the same as he remembered, bare, pale, and stained with tears.

Her once vibrant green eyes were flat, staring out into the distance unseeingly. Her hair blew over her face, but she didn’t move to brush it away.

“I just killed my family.” She murmured.

Solas did not respond. What could he respond with?

“Everyone.” She continued. “The people who raised me, gone, because of me.”

She gave the tiniest of smirks, completely humourless in expression.

“I lead them to their deaths. They were trying to disable your beacon. I had to stop them. I had to stop them…whatever the cost…I burned it all to the ground. The aravels…the halla…the children…my parents…everything…gone.”

Solas looked around them, and saw none of the evidence around them. Fire burning that hot…it incinerated everything to dust. That – _that_ was powerful magic.

He glanced back down at her lifeless form. Such a tiny elf. And yet such tremendous power. Her magic had grown tenfold since he’d last seen her.

But a more important question burned in his mind; why did she stop them from taking his beacon?

She seemed to know what he wanted to ask before he asked it, for she answered before he even spoke.

“The world that never was.” She said. “That’s what this place is. Just a dark nightmare, a future you hoped never to be true. I put things back to the world I knew, the last time I was trapped in a future like that. I couldn’t ask you to do less. This world was never meant to be. It should never have been.”

She wet her lips slightly. “I will burn it down. Burn it all down, to the very foundations. I’ll burn it away until the last piece is the one I’m standing on.”

“And then you will burn with the old world too.” Solas said quietly.

“Maybe so. But at least I won’t live in a world where my people aren’t even people. Where we’re shadows of what we were, where we’re not even worthy of life. If I can bring that back, then that’s enough. It has to be. I have nothing else for me here.”

She rose to her feet. It was a delicate, fluid movement, as though the action took no effort at all. She moved like water, with a purpose he’d never seen before.

She raised her hand to the fires that raged around them, and water seeped out of the ground, putting them out.

The smoulder smoke rose from the earth as the fires calmed and the water receded, and spirits huddled around the scorched earth, curiously poking at it with their magic, until grass seeds sprouted and grew anew.

She stepped forward, and flowers grew from her footsteps. Solas watched her go in silence.

She let her hand touch the newly grown grass, magic in its very roots, and flowers sprung from the ground where she touched.

Soon what was scorched, barren earth moments ago, was a blossoming field of flowers in bloom. Her eyes held a twinkle, a blue spark of something older than herself, magic from a distant age.

“Mythal.”

She turned to him then, for the first time. She had drunk from the Well of Sorrows all those years ago, but Solas had been sure he’d taken Mythal’s essence with him from her human host Flemeth.

It seems he was mistaken.

She had the Will of Mythal, the Power of Mythal, somewhere inside her, and there it bloomed, making her ever stronger.

“Just like the Dread Wolf, to be so sure of his power to not even realise he was missing a piece of it.” She finally had life in her voice, her tone was amused. Playful even.

Reminded him of how sweet it sounded years ago, when things were better. Happier times he could never get back.

“I thought I told you I wouldn’t let you go down this road alone, _ma vhenan_.” She said. “You walk the din’anshiral. You did not wish me to walk it with you, so I walk my own.”

“I did not want this. V _henan_ – ”

“ _Var lath vir suldein ma sa’lath.”_ She said.

“Sylvia…”

She smiled then. Pure as the sunrise, small though it was, just as he remembered. It was only then that he noticed the wolf’s pelt she wore as a stole, smaller than his own.

She was set in this, on this path she’d placed herself. There was no going back for her, nor for him. He knew that now.

“What of your Inquisition?”

“It’s no longer mine. If it ever was.” Sylvia replied. “Disbanding the order gave me more time, but they’re regrouping. Cassandra will be determined to stop me in my quest.”

As though a signal, a bird called, and a couple of crows suddenly left the trees. Solas watched their flight for a moment, before turning back to Sylvia, who was still watching the crows leave.

“Then we are running out of time.”

Sylvia blinked at the sudden proximity of his voice, and turned to see him inches from her. So close she could feel the warmth of his body radiating from him.

She hadn’t been this close in years, not even in dreams…

“We?”

“If you are determined to walk this path with me _vhenan_ , I cannot stop you, though I loathe to have you see what I will become.”

“No less than what I shall become myself.” Was her answer. She reached up, and cupped his cheek. He didn’t realise how much he’d missed her touch until he’d unconsciously leaned into her hand. “I will stand by you in all things _vhenan_.”

“Then we will fix the world together.”

Solas took her hand in his, and she leaned up to rest her forehead against his. For a moment, everything was as it had been long ago.

If they succeeded however, they could have this forever.

He wouldn’t lose her now even as the world was collapsing around them.

He would bring her with him into their new world, and give her the forever she deserved.

Sylvia broke away she something pressed into her hand, and she looked down to see Solas’ jawbone necklace in her palm. She looked up, to see his amused expression.

A token from Fen’Harel. For protection. She knew what she had to do.

She didn’t hesitate in kissing him then. He held her close, as though they had been separated for a lifetime, tighter than ever as if she would disappear the moment he let go.

“May the Dread Wolf guide me I will find my way back to you _vhenan_ ,” she whispered against his lips.

The jawbone necklace nestled comfortably against her abdomen beneath her clothes, and she left him with a parting kiss.

“I will see you on the other side, my love.”

“You will. I will make me way home to you when I have completed my quest, and you have completed yours. We will be together still _vhenan_ , no force on this earth could stop that.”  

The Inquisition would meddle, that’s what it did best. That’s what she taught it to do after all, she could expect no less from it. But two heads were better than one, and she couldn’t let the Inquisition near Solas.

She would find her own ways of dealing with her old companions, whatever the cost, they could not stop this now.

The world was coming to an end, and even as Sylvia shut her eyes against the memory of her clan’s screams in her ears, she clutched the jawbone tightly in her fist.

_Do_ _what’s in your heart, my friend._ Cassandra had once told her. She wondered if she’d still give that advice, knowing that what was in her heart, was to walk into the abyss with the man she loved, and burn everything she knew to the ground, all for him?


End file.
